


What’s eating Valery Legasov

by Janus_my



Category: Chernobyl (HBO)
Genre: Inspired by A Christmas Carol, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 15:37:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19065553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janus_my/pseuds/Janus_my
Summary: On Christmas Eve of 1986, Valery Legasov was visited by three ghosts





	What’s eating Valery Legasov

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hannibra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannibra/gifts).



> This is a rather rushed work and completed before the series finale. I have not yet known how the series will play out, so the ending could be a canon-divergence/AU. 
> 
> The work is for my friend L&T, who is a much better writer than myself.
> 
> Update after ep05: The series finale has torn me to pieces. It was beautifully made. Now this work contains slight divergence from what happened in the trial scene. Apologies to any potential mixed-up in timelines. I have set the story after the Vienna IAEA meeting and before the trial in Chernobyl for consistency.

Just about everything in Pripyat is eating Valery Legasov, the nuclear scientist who dreams only of leaving. 

But he is not in Pripyat anymore. Nobody is. The city now lies silently in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone, but it always finds its way to Legasov’s mind. Even on this day, the Christmas Eve. He had skipped the Holy Supper, and the following Vigil. Career party men should not believe in the opium of the people. 

He sat by the table, lit a cigarette and stared out of the window. Despite the warm glowing light of several windows down the street, it was an eerily quiet night. Falling snow flakes piled onto the pavement, despite this time they were not lethal radioactive dusts, nor were there people welcoming them in awe.

 

Legasov didn’t remember dozing off. But when he woke up he found that he was not alone. A young girl, no more than twelve, was sitting across the table. At first he thought it was radiation. It had been giving him headaches, sleepless nights and non-stopping coughs ended with blood stains on numerous handkerchiefs. Now he wanted to add hallucination on his list of “symptoms after consistent exposure to above safety threshold dose of radiation”. Hell, maybe he can write a paper and publish it on some nuclear science journal. 

His thoughts were interrupted by a question. “Do you remember me, Professor Legasov? “ The girl asked, in an innocent way that only children possess. 

So hallucination can talk now. Wonderful things that radiation poisoning can do to you, Legasov thought. “No, I don’t think so.” The girl smirked. “How come, Professor? I thought you were rather familiar with me. You used to hear signs of me all the time around Chernobyl. Those Geiger counters went crazy whenever I was near.” 

Legasov was profoundly confused. Amused by his puzzled expression, the girl giggled. “I am the ghost of radiation, Professor. And you are beaming full of it.” She jumped down from the chair, swiftly like a cat. “It’s Christmas Eve, Professor, don’t you wonder how people of Pripyat are celebrating?” She took Legasov’s hand and led him out of the door. Her hand was so cold that it sent shivers down his spine. She was pretty, but she was pretty in a way that forest fires were pretty: something to be admired from a distance, not up close. 

They were standing in a ramshackle apartment , gazing at the candle lit attic. A pale, sickly-looking child crouched on the bed, with his sobbing mother sitting besides him. It was Christmas Eve, yet the only festive thing in the room was the honey colored moonlight peered in through the windows.

The child was coughing. Dark bruises stood out on his pale skin like large ink blots. The ghost of radiation looked at him with sympathetic eyes. “Leukemia. He won’t survive this winter.” She turned to Legasov, eyes full of query. “But if he hadn’t been asked to do the May Day parade that year, if you had pushed for an earlier evacuation, he would have been a playful little boy. Isn’t that so, Professor?” 

The boy’s face was pinched with illness, and his thin hand trembled in his mother’s hold. Legasov didn’t respond to the girl. He tried, but his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth. What could he say to a dying child, a heart-broken mother, about that catastrophe, about what-ifs, about anything? 

How do you beat your enemy if it is invisible, yet lethal? When you punch your fist into a concrete wall at least you see the wall and you feel the sharp pain. It is a reminder of the physicality and the very existence of your adversary. Fighting radiation is like punching into thin air, full of efforts, yet all in vain. 

He wasn’t in the May Day parade in 1986, but he imagined it was grandiose as ever. Flowers, flags, crowds filled with smiling faces. Legasov saw these faces often in his dreams, only to have them slowly putrefied into a pulp of blood, as if they have been blasted by an invisible bullet. He wondered where are those faces now. 

The girl sighed, took his hand and they left. 

Moonlight shone on the snow paved roads. It was quiet. So quiet that Legasov could only hear the squeaking sound of him stepping on the snow. “Where are we going? Why are you here?” His lips finally obeyed his command to move. 

“Ah, the forever inquisitive mind of scientists.” The girl spoke with a hint of amusement. “I am taking you to an old friend.” 

 

They stopped at an office building. Legasov started to wonder whether this was getting too bizarre even for a dream. Nobody works in the Christmas Eve. 

But the girl stopped at the gloomy entrance and slightly curtsied to someone in the dark. It took a while for Legasov to make out the shape of a man. A silhouette with broad shoulders wrapped in a heavy black coat and with neatly cut hair shining like silver. But he couldn’t see the man’s face, as it was well-hidden under the shadow of his hat. 

“Who are you?” The men did not answer. “He is the ghost of memories past.” The girl whispered to Legasov. “I will leave you to him then, Professor. Oh! And a very Merry Christmas to you.” She waved to Legasov, and somehow diffused into the light in three different kinds of beams. 

The ghost of memories past opened the office door, and gestured Legasov to follow. There was hardly any deco on the barren cement walls, aside from some wall paper that was already peeling off in patches. A book shelf filled with brown Manila folders, and beneath it was the not-very-secret small cabinet storing vodka. The cloak stand by the door held a black overcoat and a grey scarf. Typical office of a career party men. Apparatchiks, Legasov thought. He couldn’t help noticing the brand new telephone by the window, as it didn’t go well with the decay smell in the air. 

There was a grumbling noise at the back of the room. From the simple bunk bed in the corner. It was rather familiar. He saw the man named Boris Shcherbina getting up from the corner, stumbling his way to the vodka cabinet. Boris pulled out the vodka bottle and poured a glass half full, only to spill rest of the bottle onto the document on his desk. “Bloody hell…” Legasov remained silent when Boris was busy rescuing the vodka-stained documents, in a rather clumsy fashion. It was radiation poisoning. Legasov himself had long lost count how many times he failed to light his cigarette with his trembling hands, or how many vodka glasses he had accidentally broken. 

He just never thought this happened to Boris as well. Boris was always the steadier one, the headstrong old fogey, the captain who navigated through the mist and rough waters of Kremlin with a suit and tie. Hell, the old stick-in-the-mud even refused to wear masks in Chernobyl. Legasov almost begged him to at least put on the mask. He remembered himself shouting to Boris “For God’s sake Boris! This is a nuclear catastrophe and you are hanging that mask around your neck like a fucking necklace!” Boris shot him a grim look. “Look, Valery. You said it yourself that there is no way for us to fight radiation. So quit lecturing me.” Legasov regretted all those late-night vodka-smelled Nuclear Energy 101 lectures he had given Boris in his room. Boris always reminded him of some grumpy bulldog, with an eternal troubled look on his face yet the spirit and determination to do a crash course in “nuclear physics: beginner to advanced” over a week’s time. 

But he lied to Boris about radiation then. He told Boris, in their KGB-followed walks and their most-definitely-bugged rooms, that radiation would have killed them in a few years time, in forms of cancer or leukemia. Boris remarked, over his fifth shot of vodka, that they would have gotten it off easy then. At that point dying would have been a much better option than living. In fact, at that point, perhaps nothing is worse than living. Legasov was a scientist. And scientists tell no lies. But Legasov didn’t have the heart to tell comrade Shcherbina that they would have suffered a long, painful chronic radiation poisoning, before eventually dying of cancer. He just thought that maybe radiation would spare this stubborn old bulldog. But he was wrong. 

Boris had managed to pick up a telegram from the mess on his desk. Legasov knew the content, as he had received the same notice just yesterday. It was an official telegram notifying him to attend a meeting in Kremlin to discuss results of the Chernobyl accident investigation. He had been documenting his progress of the investigation, and had made countless pledges to at least speak with Kremlin. Boris had read to the part of list of attendees, and sighed when he had spotted Legasov’s name on it. “Valery, you fool… What are you thinking…This is not your game.” 

This is not your game. Legasov had heard that from Boris before. 

They were due in Kremlin that day. He was staring at the painting on the wall when they were there. Ivan the Terrible and His son Ivan. Might as well call it Soviet Union the undefeatable and her people. The painting would strike anyone as terrifying and shocking in first encounter. But Legasov had known things much more terrifying than that. In Soviet Union things are always presented with the utmost irony and absurdity. This is a place where it is not possible to have a nuclear catastrophe, despite the very meeting they were going to have was about the monster in Chernobyl. 

He hadn’t slept for at least two days. He had buried himself behind the mountain of documents and diagrams on his desk, trying to balance the possibility of reactor polluting underground water and the consequences of practically sentencing hundreds of men a death penalty. Equations and numbers danced on his mind, while tons of lead weighed on his conscience. “Fix your tie.” Voice of Boris saved him from drowning in his own thoughts. Legasov realized that he was anything but presentable for Kremlin. His suit was a wrinkled mess and the hurriedly-tied knot around his neck only added to the impression of a disheveled man, completely at a loss. 

The meeting was not a pleasant one. Boris tried to be upbeat, announcing the positive progress they have made so far. But Legasov knew the long battle had just begun. Life, even in its best form, is a mixture of fortunes and misfortunes. And right now misfortune and despair lied in front of them like an endless plain. Nobody wanted to be a mope, especially in Kremlin where no bad news ever existed. But someone had to speak the truth about the work to be done. It appears that the penny had finally dropped when he ended abruptly with death of thousands of men. They only got one sentence in reply: “Start at once.” He did start at once by chasing off the first deputy chairman of KGB, confronting with him on the whereabouts of Ulana. He succeeded in securing her release, but was dragged out of Kremlin by a stone-faced Boris. Legasov protested, saying that he needed to get Ulana, only to be replied with “I will work on that”. 

Legasov didn’t remember how long, or to which direction they have walked. May is a pleasant time in Moscow. A light wind blew from the river shore, leaving the frozen winter a distant memory. They were standing on a bridge, leaving passersby casting curious glances at this odd pair. Legasov was listening to the swishing sound when river rolled through stones. The river had run through Moscow long before Shcherbina and Legasov existed, and it will run through Moscow long after they perish. The eternal sound of river are impartial to its surroundings and to the life and death of people living nearby. Yet this impartiality yields a promise, a promise that holds forever, that life will carry on. 

“We are going back to Pripyat at first light tomorrow.” Boris was gazing at Moscow River below the bridge. “But Ulana…” Legasov was cut short by a snarl. “Enough! When would you learn? You can’t do everything, be everywhere at the same time, Valery. You can only do one thing at a time. Pick your fight and fight it. One foot in front of another. That’s how we will do it. That’s how we will clean up Chernobyl.” Boris rubbed his forehead wearily. Legasov thought he had peeked into an unknown part of comrade Boris Shcherbina, through a slight crack of the tough kernel, through his armor of calmness and determination. 

“And now, Valery, you and I need a drink. At least vodka here is not radioactive. And you don’t need to ask for a radioactive-dust-free glass every time.” Legasov’s watch pointed to six o’clock. “Isn’t it a bit early?” Boris took his arm and commented something along the lines of Moscow standard time for drinking. Legasov couldn’t really blame himself for not recalling the exact thing, as subsequent five hours of straight vodka drinking had significantly contributed to his memory loss. 

“You know, Valery, I hated scientists. Scientists! Arrogant buggers who love poking their noses into everywhere and flashing their petty little scientific conscience…” Boris was clearly drunk. He loosened his tie (it was a miracle to Legasov how he kept on wearing the tie in such a neat way) and turned his head to Legasov. “And you. I hated you first. You are just like them. And I had to listen to you! On and on and on! And I was the one who had to supply you with anything you want… God, Valery, you are a pain in the ass.” Legasov was thinking whether it was a good time to leave this mumbling drunk deputy chairman on the streets of Moscow. “But I trust you, Valery, more than anything else. I will do whatever it takes to back you up, to get things done. But you need to know, there are only limited things I can do. I can’t save you every time when you charged after a KGB official. I can’t stop you from giving doomsday speeches in Kremlin. Valery, I beg you, do your scientist work and let me worry about the rest.” 

Legasov thought he was delusional. Boris Shcherbina, the very person who threatened to have him shot on a helicopter, was begging him? But his scientist instinct spoke faster than his thoughts. “Boris, someone has to tell the truth. That’s what scientists do.” The men next to him smiled bitterly after finishing his glass. “But at what cost? You thought you were speaking the truth, the great messiah, the knight in shining armor. They have tolerated you now because they need you to finish the cleanup, but how long can they continue to do that? Do you really think this country could let you loose to tell the truth, to let you humiliate a nation that is obsessed with not being humiliated? They could cut off your telephone line tomorrow, stop you from attending meetings, and they will see to it that your report will never be read by anyone else. They may even go to the extreme of silencing you forever. There is always a noble path, but it could all be pointless.” Boris tapped on his empty vodka glass. “I am worried about you, Valera. Please, this is not your game. Do not get yourself into this.” 

Legasov had thought about this. But he was, after all, according to Boris, a naive idiot who posed no threat. He never reckoned that the truth known to him, despite all his effort, might as well all disappear into the thin morning air of Moscow, before reaching anyone else. The helplessness struck him then, the same helplessness he had felt as a child in Tula, watching miners dying in agony from tuberculosis. He had decided to retreat to the concrete domain of chemistry and physics ever since then. The precision of science offered him comfort. At least periodic table will never let you down. He refused to feel the same helplessness of watching other people suffering without being able to lend a hand. 

He must have choked down excessive amount of vodka after that. He thought he had greatly enhanced his alcohol tolerance after spending endless long nights with Boris, but turned out that he was the one being carried by the firm hands of his fellow career party man. 

They stumbled into the Legasov’s hotel room. Legasov finally landed on his bed after protesting Boris’s effort of removing Valery’s wrinkled suit. He was still wearing his glasses, but couldn’t see Boris’s face clearly. A steady hand helped him to end his hopeless struggle with the glasses. Legasov’s world fell into a blur. 

“Good night, Valera.” Legasov felt the press of lips on his forehead. He had thought what Boris would taste like. The first deputy chairman was such a neat person, immaculate even. Perhaps he would taste like cedar trees on the mountain top. Or rusty razors with a hint of blood. But the kiss felt like fallen snowflakes. It stayed for a second, then was gone without a trace. He remembered reaching out his hand, but only heard a sigh. 

Legasov’s recollection was interrupted abruptly by the sound of telephone dials. He realized that he was no longer at that Moscow hotel room. He was here in comrade Boris Shcherbina’s office, with a whatever ghost of memories past. Boris was trying to make phone calls. But of course nobody would pick up on Christmas Eve. The deputy chairman just went on dialing more numbers, because if there was one thing a man need to know when he was woken up in Christmas Eve, it should be that he was not alone. Legasov just hoped Boris wouldn’t smash this telephone set again. It was clearly brand new. “Who is he calling?” Legasov asked the lone silhouette in the corner. The ghost of memories past gestured him to simply listen. “Yes, chairman, I know it’s late and I apologize for calling at this time… Yes, I will be brief. This meeting in April, the Chernobyl one, is it necessary to have Professor Legasov? You see, he is only a scientist and he had been proven to be harmless… Yes, I understand he is the leading scientist…of course he is being watched… Yes, I understand. Sorry to have bothered you. Goodbye.” 

Boris hung up, stared at the phone gravely and pinched his nose in frustration. Legasov thought that Boris might have adopted some of his habits during their years together. Then he heard Boris mumbling his name. “Damn you stubborn fool, Valera…” He wanted to say something, reach out and pat Boris on the back, give him a hug even. But he couldn’t. The ghost of memories past grabbed him by the arm and led him out of the office. Legasov only heard distant sounds of Boris dialing again. 

 

 

Legasov was sitting by the table of his own apartment. The ghost of memories past had taken him back here. About bloody time, Legasov thought. About time for him to wake up from this absurd dream now. But the ghost suggested him sit down in a rather military way. Together with the heavy coat and broad shoulders, it reminded Legasov of someone who threatened to throw him out of the helicopter when they first met. The ghost of memories past went on to open the apartment door, and then came a weary voice. “Thank you.” The ghost of memories past went out, leaving Legasov alone with this stranger. 

Only that he realized he was not with a stranger. He was facing a man in his early fifties, reserved and tired, with a pair of pale blue eyes behind his heavy glasses. He was facing himself. Or at least his very own doppelgänger. Legasov remembered his mother once told him Catherine the Great saw her own doppelgänger when she was dying. Does this mean he is going to die? 

The man sat down across the table and started to wipe his glasses with his sleeve. “No, Valery. You are not going to die. It just happened that I am the third, you know three times the charm thing, and the last ghost to visit you tonight. I am the ghost of your conscience. Or what was left of it.” 

Legasov let out a sneer. “Great. The petty remains of my conscience. So what are the charges you will press against me? I already had a little girl called radiation sentencing me death, a silent man accusing me of stepping too far, and now my own conscience requires an audience. Go on, I am all ears.” The ghost put his glasses back on, raised an eyebrow but did not speak. Legasov began to get irritated by the silence. There is certainly a limit that one could be pushed to. “I worked in Chernobyl for the entire cleanup process. I made sure that the investigation was carried through. I went to the Vienna conference and told the world about Chernobyl. I have already given my life. Isn’t that enough?”

The ghost laughed sharply. Legasov hated that he had to stare at this thing, the man with the very face he saw whenever he looked into the mirror. And this thing claimed to be his conscience, which he had long doubted if he had anymore. “Valery, you see, you don’t need to be so hostile and full of hatred. You can’t hate someone and secretly expect him to visit at the same time. I am not accusing you of anything. For that conference, you were, after all, just a little selective in disclosing all the information you had, weren’t you?” The ghost had a voice like winds over a desert of bones. Legasov quivered when he heard it speaking. 

“I did not lie.” Legasov managed to squeeze four words out of his gritted teeth. He might be a naive harmless scientist, but he was anything but a liar. “Yes, of course you didn’t lie. But that was not what I said. I said, you did not tell the truth. The whole truth. And that, my dear Valery, is a very different matter.” The ghost of conscience spoke in a measured pace. His tone was mild, but his words were horrifying. 

Now it was Legasov’s turn to sit in stony silence. The ghost blinked his blue eyes owlishly and continued. “Do you need a little reminder of what you said at the conference? Quote, ‘an extremely unlikely combination of violations of the order and mode of operation, committed by the power unit personnel.’ ”

Legasov remembered every word he said at the conference. And it has tormented him ever since. 

“Valery, I can’t let you go to the conference with this.” Boris held the sheets of speech tightly and furrowed his brows. “Carelessness and mass movements of unorganized work in our field of nuclear energy… the neglect of design flaws in safety standards… Valery, this speech is suicide.” Boris had insisted on reading his report to the IAEA conference, and this response of him didn’t surprise Legasov. He decided instead of confronting a furious bulldog, he would tell comrade Shcherbina a story. “You know, Boris, the other day I was listening to some recordings of dialogues between operators in reactor No.4. One operator called another and asked, ‘Viktor, it’s written here in the program what needs to be done, and then much of what is written is crossed out. What should I do?’ The other operator on the wire simply said, ‘and then you act on the strikethrough.’ What do you expect when the operators are the sole controller of the emergency system, and yet they need to act on unclear instructions?”

Shcherbina was pinching the bridge of his nose again, as if he was trying to get rid of a lingering headache. Legasov took the chance to continue. “No one in the world is guilty. When you look at the chain of events: why did one do this, the other did that, etc., etc. It is impossible to name the sole culprit of the initiator of the crime. Because it is the circuit of everything that had led to this disaster.” 

Boris gave him an icy look. “When I told you to do your scientist work, I did not mean this.” He stood up and poured Legasov a glass of vodka, which Legasov ignored on purpose. Boris sighed and took the glass himself. “What for, Valery? Let’s say, you managed to give this speech in Vienna and let the world know the Soviet way of neglecting safety and of rushing through procedures were to blame. What happen next? Do you expect all our RBMK reactors to be improved overnight? Do you expect your investigation report, and your safety suggestions will reach our plants and operators in Kursk, Leningrad and Smolensk?” 

Boris drank his vodka and stared at Legasov gravely. “No, Valery. Your report, together with your knowledge on how to improve the safety standards, will need to be approved by the whole control system of nuclear energy industry. It need to pass through specialists at all levels, from the head of laboratory to the director of nuclear institute, through supervisors, chief designers, numerous departmental councils, interdepartmental committees… It would most certainly be buried and archived with ‘classified’ in the process and ended up somewhere in Lubyanka. And more RBMK power plants would be built, in the mean time. ”

Boris gave back the speech script to Legasov. “It takes more than one man to save the world.” Legasov wanted to say something back, but was pressed down on his chair by the steadfast hand of the deputy chairman. “And I certainly don’t want you to be the martyr.” Boris left for the door, but turned back to Legasov before leaving. This time there was a slight crack in his voice. “In this country, you have to lie to make things happen. But if you insist on doing it your way, Valera… don’t come back here after Vienna.” 

“So you did it his way then? Because that was the only way to do it?” The ghost of conscience looked at Legasov with an expressionless face. “Funny things you said, really. If telling the truth won’t help, how does not telling the truth help? Because academician Valery Legasov, leading scientist on the Chernobyl disaster investigation, said that the accident was a rare event of personnel mistakes, now there won’t be any further analysis into the issue of void coefficients, of design flaws in control pods, of inferior safety standards. Because, you said to the world in Vienna, what happened in Chernobyl was just a perfect storm.” 

The ghost started to wipe his glasses again. “Valery, you held your principle over things… tiny things. You were so stubborn about it. Your scientific conscience had all worked well except for the Vienna meeting. The world is still in a limbo about the accident.” 

Legasov remembered Boris had said the same thing. About how stubborn he was and how obsessed he could get when it came to his principle. Legasov had insisted that every soldier accompanying him near reactor No.4 to be fully briefed about potential consequences. He blasted the person in charge for equipment when he saw there were a shortage of dosimeters for roof cleaners. He even went to the extreme of overseeing construction of camp green and camp fairy tale together with Boris, as he wanted to ensure that the liquidators would feel comfortable in these camps. 

Boris had laughed at him back then, saying he was a stubborn hopeless romantic when he said there should be flowers in dining rooms of these camps. “No, Boris. I want to know that aside from a place where people would sleep after work, the camp would be no worse in any other way comparing to other places in Soviet Union. That’s the least we can do for them.” Legasov must have appeared very serious, as Boris stopped joking and put his arm around Legasov’s shoulder. The taller man tightened his wrap and said, “I will try my best. You have my word, Valery.” 

The weary voice started his commentary on Legasov’s memories again. “A slight ease on your conscience, Valery? You and your principles might have saved twenty-some workers from radiation in Chernobyl, but how many lives have you cost with the lies? The alarms are still going. The more substandard nuclear plants built, the more real danger might happen. This nation is too afraid of being humiliated, so it is ready to sell things we cherish, praise things we despise, and act on things we do not understand.” 

The ghost of conscience stood up, starting to tie his scarf and look Legasov in the eyes. “Stop this madness and tell the truth, let the world know. Before it’s too late.” The ghost cast one last glance at the half-full laundry basket where Legasov had been dumping his blood-stained handkerchiefs into, then nodded and left. He closed the door with a whispering “Merry Christmas”. 

 

 

Legasov is playing around with his new cassette recorder. He had got it from Boris, lying to comrade Shcherbina that he needed a cassette recorder to document his thoughts. “Good for depression treatment, said by the doctors.” He had said. It took a while, as he is under close surveillance and clearly should not be allowed to put his hands on such a device. He was forbidden to meet with Boris after the trial, but his good old comrade Shcerbina managed to get it for him. Boris always delivers, be it boron carbide, lead or cassette recorders. Shcherbina even took the liberty to put several tapes of classical music in the package. Igor Stravinsky. Where the heck did this Ukrainian bulldog get his horrible taste? 

Legasov decides to start recording. There are always these kind of things in one’s memoirs, things one would never tell anyone except to his friends. There are some other things that one would not even tell his friends, as he keeps those to himself. But at last, there are things that one wouldn’t even dare to face himself. And the more integrity one has, the more this sort of thing one would accumulate. 

Legasov would have thought himself as man with integrity, and he had decided to face those things. He had thought about what to say of Chernobyl, how to tell the whole truth to the world and how to send the tapes back to Boris, asking him to keep the recording safe or even disseminate. He had figured a way to make sure his voice would get through this time. He imagined that the career party man will most definitely curse him over his dead body and call his tapes a ticking bomb. But he knows Boris will try his best. He always does. 

He put in the blank cassette and pressed the record button. “Comrade Shcherbina…” He pressed the stop button and rewound the tape to start over. “My dear Boris…”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading through and please point out any timeline/wording mistakes as this work is not written in my native language. 
> 
> Some of Legasov's memories were drawn from the scripts of his audiotapes, which are available in Russian: http://www.pseudology.org/razbory/Legasov/00.htm


End file.
